


The Original Roller-Skating Giraffe

by gisho



Series: Background Characters [3]
Category: Girl Genius
Genre: Meta, Mid-Canon, construct clank machine, opera - Freeform, species-bending casting, the storm king - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-10
Updated: 2018-10-10
Packaged: 2019-07-28 00:50:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16230779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gisho/pseuds/gisho
Summary: Wherin the Castle Wulfenbach Amatuer Dramatic Society gets ambitious with their new production. (Written for GG Event Week 2018.)





	The Original Roller-Skating Giraffe

\--

Yura Brilsky, chief set designer of the Castle Wulfenbach Amatuer Dramatic Society, leans back and crosses his arms. "No. Can't be done." He's rubbing at the scar on his wrist; he makes himself stop and pick up the wrench.

"Have you no imagination, man?" Elsie's voice is strangely bubbly. Probably a loose vocodynamic disc again, but Vilka can't see with her tentacles waving like that. "I know we lost the Informaclank, but we can't just give up! People have been waiting for this opera for two years!"

"We also lost the entire Jägerchorus. Because the Jägers all deserted. Andronicus was transferred to the ground and Ogglespoon crashed into Mount Kemet and died."

Elsie leans in, turning a slightly menacing acid green. "So recast."

"Look, why do you care so much?" He whangs the stubborn bolt once with his occitipal wrench, and has another go while it's still vibrating. This time it actually starts to turn. "We've done five productions since we had to cancel that one, which is a fucking miracle considering all the other crap going on, and it's not like anyone remembers their lines by now. We'd be starting from scratch. Well, scrawl. In my notebook. Since we had to strike the set."

Elsie snakes in a tentacle to grab the bolt as it comes loose, and drops it neatly in her bucket. "Because a lot of people really wanted to see it, is all. It's horribly romantic. It's a _classic_. And none of the crew could make it to the Mechaniksopera version."

Yep, loose disc. Fixable, but Yura's going to have to dig out the metasyntactic grease again. After lunch. "Does it really need the giraffe?"

"If we're leaving out everything else, yes."

Yura contemplates this idea while he gets the last three bolts loose. An almost-bare stage instead of the usual elaborate scenery. Just a projected backdrop, with maybe a few minimalistic pieces - no. No set at all. Costumes that look like they raided the Mechanikopera's wardrobe, got half a dozen costumes, and had to split them up between two dozen performers. The intricate Rescue Dance done with repair crew stepladders and then, just when you're expecting a toy on a stick, two actors in two halves of a giraffe costume come skating out, because why use a clank when you have _minions_? And for the muses -

It barely takes any strength. The entire turbine pump slides back twelve centimeters with a simple tug, just enough for Elsie to reach in and do her job. "Fine," Yura says. "Suggest it at the meeting and I'll vote for it."

\--

"No. Not on your life. Absolutely not. We'd get _death threats_ and the Guards would laugh and say we deserved them, and they'd be _right_." Issachar Novak (assistant stage manager, deputy head of hydroponics in real life) is waving his hands like a pantomime Italian. "Am I the only one who remembers the Marlowe Incident?"

"Apparently our anonymous suggestor forgot it." Kinsbury's eyes dart around the room, but nobody raises their hand. Of course not. "Unless they have a compelling explanation as to why we should put on _Dance of the Aethlingfjord Herring_?"

They have, apparently, more sense than to answer. Yura rolls his eyes. After a few seconds Kinsbury crosses it off the list, with maybe a little more force on the pen than necessary. (Undersecretary to the Diplomatic Staff; there must be pent-up rage.) "Alright. Next proposal, Aristopodes's _Pyramus and Thisbe_."

Almost immediately Leona Liviescu (sound design, ingenue, Starboard Bay 6 longshoreclank op) raises a hand. "I recuse myself as Thisbe on the grounds I'd burst out laughing."

Issachar suggests, "Elsie could do it."

"Wrong kind of hilarious." Elsie squelches as she leans back, but at least her vocoder isn't bubbling anymore. "They would laugh at me. Construct-human love is stigmatized already."

Liviescu is nodding. "We don't want the whole audience sympathizing with the parents."

There are a lot of things Yura could say to this, starting with _Seriously? This is Castle Wulfenbach, not some walled village in the Wastelands._ On the other hand, it seems graceless to argue with Elsie on this, especially after she'd made it so clear she wanted to keep their relationship _quiet_. She's not actually wrong. Even on Castle Wulfenbach some people look askance at human-octopus romances. It just seems cowardly not to cast an octopus as a romantic lead because bigots exist. Yura bites his lip and lets his fists clench under the table.

"Open auditions," Kinsbury offers, with the air of prodding a bruise. "We need fresh blood."

Kinsbury's been going on about fresh blood for two years now. "Or we could do a show we actually have the actors for," Yura points out.

There's a certain amount of murmuring, but it's agreeable murmuring. Kinsbury sighs and crosses it off. "Alright. That brings us down to ... The Heterodyne Boys And The Mystery Of The Thrice-Dark City, or the Reichenbach opera, The Storm King."

"The one we almost did two years ago?" Issachar asks.

"Precisely."

Ahmad (Vecchi roles, envelope maintenance) raises a hand. "I don't think doing a Heterodyne story is a very good idea," he offers, in that soft, quiet voice he only sheds on stage. "The Baron might not like it."

"We did Iron Glacier before," Elsie says. "I was the Professor's Doorkeeper." 

And she was delightfully terrifying, but dammit, wasn't she trying to argue for Storm King? Yura crosses his arms. "Different Baron," he points out. "The old one even came to _see_ Iron Glacier." And had sent flowers to old Kopley, who'd played him, who'd lost a leg in the Siege of Mechanicsburg and quit to move in with his grandson in Buda as soon as the metal replacement was adjusted. It was a pity; he'd have made a good Clemethious. "The old one wasn't obsessed with Lucrezia Mongfish's daughter. Have any of you taken a good look at the walls of Mechanicsburg lately? Those statues are not the work of a reasonable man."

Issachar's nostrils are flared and he's clutching his old _Airship Regatta '84_ mug so tight it's a good thing he's not a clank. It would shatter. "I'm not sure an opera where the main character falls in love with a Heterodyne and watches her vanish and goes completely mimmoth-brained is something he'd like either."

Well, no, he might take it for an implied rebuke. If he even heard about it. More likely, half the audience would be touched by the story of a brave man driven mad by love and half would think it was an attempt at subversion. _Oh._ Is that why Elsie suggested it? It's easy to forget where she comes from. Technically Elsie is as much a construct as Yura, but technically so are the mimmoths they have to keep driving away from the air pumps. In practice, she grew up with parents who looked like her. She joined up for the sheer adventure. She doesn't _owe_ Wulfenbach, and she wouldn't care about undermining his plans.

But she also doesn't have a devious bone in - okay, Elsie doesn't have any bones in her body, but she's not devious. Probably she really does just like the story.

Yura throws out, "It's still classic. Can't we just play it up as a great tragedy?"

"Maybe." Ahmad is looking up at the steam pipes. They havn't started rattling yet this meeting, but it's only been twenty minutes. "At least Storm King is serious. Three comedies in a row ..."

There's a cough from Liviescu. "For what it's worth, I'd rather play Euphrosynia than Lucrezia. It would be nice to do something with singing again. I remember most of the tunes, even."

"Yes," Kinsbury says, "but we don't have Andronicus or Ogglespoon anymore."

Absurd. Yura throws his hands in the air. "So someone gets to learn the part! Like in every other play we've done! It's not impossible!"

"We'd need musicians," Liviescu says.

They all look down to the other end of the table, where Sima, their stage manager and chief stagehand, is perched as usual cross-legged on the lap of her hulking, glass-headed second body. He should be used to the Radioheads by now, but they still give Yura the creeps. She taps her chin, staring at nothing in particular. After a few seconds she says, "There's a mechanical orchestra in one of the disused labs. If we can't make it work, the Lackya have half a chamber orchestra left."

"Hhhmph," says Kinsbury, but after a few seconds adds, "Alright. It's physically possible. Show of hands?"

\--

The new singing-vocoder is larger, and brass-edged, and Yura is especially proud that he got it installed in under a minute. Elsie hates losing her voice. But it was worth it for this; she's spent most of the last three days doing little trills while they work, and now she's doing careful scales. Yura ventures a comforting pat on her aquashell. She'll feel the vibration, at least. "You'll be fine," he says. "You can't possibly be worse at this than me."

She wraps a tentacle around his wrist, hiding the scar. "I'm so proud of you. You'll make a magnificent Ogglespoon."

"It was a good excuse to do minimalist set design."

"Still." Her voice wavers, a leftover vibrato edge. "I don't know. It's a clank role! I'm not a clank!" 

Yura takes a deep breath. "Elsie, human actresses have been doing Moxana since Reichenbach wrote the damn thing. I guarantee your voice is more like the real Moxana's than any of theirs. Mechanical is mechanical. You'll be fine." 

She goes quiet for a long few seconds. "It still feels funny. Clanks should play clanks, it's more realistic."

There's no good answer to that; Yura can only shrug and offer weakly, "They're not exactly beating down the doors to audition."

"I guess not." Her skin slowly goes bluer, calm. "Besides, I'm not the only one. Sima's playing the roller-skating giraffe."

"That's not really a clank, even. Just a machine."

"It has its own motive force. It fits the definition in Blackwater's Dictionary." 

An octopus looking prim is a very odd sight, for all that it's adorable and makes Yura want to grab her and kiss her. She doesn't even like to be kissed. He covers his grin with a hand, and pretends to cough. "By that definition Castle Wulfenbach is a clank, but nobody ever says that about airships." Airships don't _think_.

He has to believe that. All the mechanics have to believe that or they'd never walk down a dark passageway alone again, and that would play havoc with the lighting refill schedules.

They really should go in now. The first rehearsal starts in three minutes. But Elsie is winding a stray tentacle around his ankle and murmuring, "But in English airships are still called _she_."

"Then English is -" He breaks off as Andronicus Valois, in the person of Sergeant Helene Mackay, rounds the corner, and they hastily straighten up into two friends who were having a friendly chat and not flirting at all. Between the upright bearing and the old-fashioned haircut, she looks so much the part he wants to bow, and all the shiny buttons on her uniform don't hurt. Of course they picked her. Andronicus is meant to be heroic. 

And Ogglespoon is meant to be the villain, and it shouldn't be surprising that when a ragbag construct with eyes in not quite the right place and one hand always too curled said he'd give it a try, Kinsbury put his name down without so much as asking for volunteers. It is, Yura keeps telling himself, a touching demonstration of faith. He hasn't been on stage since he was the Second Chemist in _Tenure-Track Minds_. 

The Sergeant nods to them both. "Ready for rehearsal?" 

Yura throws off a mock salute. "Lines memorized and ready, ma'am."

"I even practiced turning purple," Elsie says, demonstrating as she speaks. It's a gorgeous shade, very regal.

"Excellent." The Sergeant actually cracks a smile, and pats the grip of her deathray. "On three? One, two, three -"

And together, the three of them do the traditional Dramatic Society wish: "Break a piston."

\--


End file.
